News-Antique.com - Sep 10,2010 - (West Palm Beach, FL) West Palm Beach Antiques festival owners Kay and Bill Puchstein continue to be amazed and pleased that their creative scheduling of antique shows during the Florida summer has been so warmly received by customers and dealers. They reported that when the Labor Day edition of the Festival opened Saturday September 4 over 300 people were standing in line. They were especially pleased that some of their new and “out of the box” approaches have attracted a younger buying crowd. The Puchsteins said that dealer space for the October 2,3 show is almost sold out and dealers are signing up for the winter season beginning in November.

Every dealer who set up outside did very well for the two day holiday show as did most of the dealers inside with merchandise like A. E. Backus and Highwaymen paintings, lots of oak and country formal furniture and Hoosier cabinets. Vintage jewelry, coins, silver, oriental rugs, were good sellers as were guns, dolls, postcards, beads, glass, pottery, vintage linens and handbags.

One of the pioneering ideas found at the West Palm Beach Antiques Festival is the restoration services offered by Steve Allred and the West Palm Beach Restoration Studios. While Allred’s personal restoration specialty is high end porcelain Palm Beach Restoration Studios works with a network of competent and qualified restoration professionals who cover a broad range of specialties including furniture, oil paintings, art and almost any other category of antiques and collectibles. These artisans and artists combine traditional techniques with the latest technology of the trade.

Visitors can drop off articles in need of Allred’s services and pick them up on a subsequent visit to the Festival. In the Palm Beach Restoration booth Allred displays examples of the network’s finished products as well as accepting new projects for completion before the next event. He also supervises the on-site repair of glass and crystal in the booth.

Allred has expanded both the size and the scope of Palm Beach Restoration Studios, expanding to a 9,000 square foot facility and adding a consumer information service. The Studio sponsors classes in porcelain restoration, wood items restoration and identification of antiques including how to distinguish between genuinely old artifacts and reproductions or forgeries. The classes range from Beginner to Advanced in technicality and are open to the public. The Studio also offers appraisals for damage claims and fraud and offers instruction on how to properly pack, ship and insure antiques and art. Information on all the services and classes is available at the Studio booth in the Festival.

The last of the two day Summer Shows before returning to the three day format in November will be October 2,3. Show hours are 10:00AM – 5:00PM on Saturday and 10:00AM – 4:30PM on Sunday. Adult daily admission $7.00, seniors $6.00 with a $1 discount coupon for adult admission available on the website. Anyone under 16 is admitted free. Early Buyer’s admission on Saturday morning at 9:00AM is $10.00 and is good for both